Never met someone without a second/family/surname, except for celebrities like Cher and Madonna who have last names but just don't use them anymore. (Okay, I haven't actually met them, but you know what I mean.) But, as someone who has first and last names that are extremely common--top 5 US surname, classic first name that was in the top 5 when I was born--I do occasionally run into other people with the same first and last name as me. I've actually never really had a problem with it, no doubt thanks to hard-working people like Slartibartfast who fixed everything in the background! Fortunately my last name is so common in the US that I don't think I've ever had anyone ask, "Hey, I know a guy with that last name, are you guys related?" Because honestly we probably aren't.

Someone I knew who also had a common name actually had the police try to serve an arrest warrant on her for a different person with an identical name. On the one hand, "You must be looking for another Jane Miller!" probably makes a nice excuse for the bad guy. But on the other... it could also easily be true.

There is a specific culture where the children have two last names, one is their father's and one is their mother's. Jessica Sanchez Rodriguez for example

However, in school documents they just use one. Jessica Sanchez, which is usually what they submit their application to the university with, not noticing the blank that asks for any other names used.

On legal documents, the name is usually Firstname Lastname Lastname. I have to explain at least 6 times a year that their financial aid information entered on the US government's website has to match exactly the name they have at my university or their financial aid information won't match.

Lately I am having more issues with parents and children that have the exact same name and address, don't use Junior or Senior and the only information to distinguish one from the other is the birth date. Makes my job so much more fun.

A classmate of mine had one-letter name - A Xiong. This was during the advent of computerized record-keeping, with lots of companies creating their own cobbled-together systems, some of which were programmed better than others. Our school district, when it computerized, did not get one of the better-programmed ones. A (as well as a few other students in the same situation) had a really hard time because the system insisted that all name fields must have at least three characters. I think he ended up as "A[space][space]" which, of course, made the formatting all messed up on anything that had our names printed on it, including our diplomas

I'm not meaning to come across as snide; am just curious: a (presumably) Malaysian, or Indonesian, called Sean, and a Korean called Kevin? Or are those "aliases", used instead of their difficult-for-Anglophones real names?

Like PPs, I've encountered a number of Asians who chose "Western" names to go by rather than going by their given names. Many (if not most) of the Asian-Americans I know also have very "Western" names, which I presume are their actual birth names. In fact, at the moment, there are four different guys named Kevin who I interact with regularly, and every single one of them is Asian-American!* So that particular name choice didn't strike me as at all unlikely. Rather the opposite!

*Three of "the Kevins" are involved in the same student club, which gets really confusing, since we rarely use surnames at club activities. I can't count how many conversations I've had that boil down to: Person A: "[Something something] Kevin..."Person B: "Which Kevin? There are three of them."Person A: "Oh, there are? He's an Asian guy."Person B: "Uh...they're all Asian, actually. Is he a new guy? Is he short or tall?..."

Never met someone without a second/family/surname, except for celebrities like Cher and Madonna who have last names but just don't use them anymore. (Okay, I haven't actually met them, but you know what I mean.)

I recall a friend from India once explaining that her "surname" that she used in the USA was actually her father's given name rather than a family name. The impression I got was that she had not had/used a surname in India, but had started using her father's name when she was moving to the USA, where everyone is expected to have a surname. If there's anyone here familiar with India, does that sound normal/likely? I might be misremembering, but I think that's what she described.

I recall a friend from India once explaining that her "surname" that she used in the USA was actually her father's given name rather than a family name. The impression I got was that she had not had/used a surname in India, but had started using her father's name when she was moving to the USA, where everyone is expected to have a surname. If there's anyone here familiar with India, does that sound normal/likely? I might be misremembering, but I think that's what she described.

I work with a lot of folks from India, and this sounds familiar. In fact, I think the person explaining to me said that there aren't really surnames as such; if people need them for government forms or whatever, they use their father's name.

My dad's side of the family has a last name, an official first name, a first name for family, a short version of the official name for ease at work and in some documents, and various nicknames.

My maternal uncle doesn't use the same last name as his parents, apparently somewhere along the line he just used his first name as his last name and pulled a new first name from one of his names for family.

Yeah, I didn't even know about my aunts' and uncles' actual names until I was in high school.

I know a couple - Indian husband/American wife. Husband felt that his Indian last name had contributed to bullying issues he experienced growing up in the US, so he insisted that not only should his wife keep her family last name, the kids should have her last name too. They compromised in giving the kids Indian first names.

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"The Universe puts us in places where we can learn. They are never easy places, but they are right. Wherever we are, it's the right place and the right time. Pain that sometimes comes is part of the process of constantly being born." - Delenn to Sheridan: "Babylon 5 - Distant Star"

An acquaintance of mine from the UK visited the South Island of New Zealand in winter and hated her entire three weeks in the country because the weather was not hot enough. Fair enough, bad weather can interfere with travel plans or other activities, but further conversation revealed that the weather had been typical for the climate and time of year, and in fact she believed that everywhere 'abroad' was hot and she and her boyfriend had previously discussed moving to Canada 'because he liked hillwalking and she liked hot weather'. She got a bit annoyed with me when I tried to explain.

Well, I think that's finally done it. My brain has officially left the building. What would one say to that? "Have you you-tubed Canada lately, then? You know, before you move."

Well it was a few years ago so maybe You Tube wasn't on her radar...but it didn't predate...like, atlases and stuff :-)

And considering there are people who get off the plane in Toronto and expect us to be living in igloos, that's just outright bizarre! Buddy of mine was stopped by some tourists in July, hauling snowmobiles. They asked them how much further they'd have to drive to get to the snow!

My students though I was pulling their legs when I told them my cousin builds a hockey rink in his backyard every winter. Even after I showed them pictures of his kids skating on it they couldn't wrap their heads around the fact the ice doesn't melt in the sun. Now these are 2nd graders that live in the subtropics, so they do have a bit of an excuse.

It is very common for Indonesians to use only one name. Which leads to Western newspaper stories about "General XYZ (who uses only one name)" or "Suharto (who used only one name)." In a previous job, I worked with a one-named man from southern India; for dealing with western publications and official paperwork, he used "L. Lastname," where Lastname was his given name and he was just repeating the initial, and signed everything with a nickname based on that.

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Any advice that requires the use of a time machine may safely be ignored.

I recall a friend from India once explaining that her "surname" that she used in the USA was actually her father's given name rather than a family name. The impression I got was that she had not had/used a surname in India, but had started using her father's name when she was moving to the USA, where everyone is expected to have a surname. If there's anyone here familiar with India, does that sound normal/likely? I might be misremembering, but I think that's what she described.

I work with a lot of folks from India, and this sounds familiar. In fact, I think the person explaining to me said that there aren't really surnames as such; if people need them for government forms or whatever, they use their father's name.

When I was in college I had a professor from India. The last name he used had 5 letters. He showed someone in out class his driver's licence. His real, full last name started with those 5 letters but filled 2 lines on his driver's licence.

I saw a TV commercial this evening for some smart phone, with a couple of guys talking about a shrink ray. One guy said it would be cool to shrink a bandicoot. Then they all admitted they didn't know what a bandicoot is.

Hey, idiots -- you're standing there with smart phones. Google it.

Actually, the people that need to be told this are the people who came up with the commercial and the company that's paying to air it. It's not a great endorsement for the product.

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It takes two people to play tug of war. If you don't want to play, don't pick up the rope.

I was just reading the posts about mincemeat pie in the "holiday hill to die on" thread...I had always vaguely heard of/read about mincemeat pie, but no one who mentioned it actually said what was in it. Silly me, I thought the name of it made sense and would tell me what it was - so I assumed it was a savory ground up meat pie (kind of like a piroshki). It didn't help that one of the contexts I heard it in was when a character in a story was threatening to grind another into mincemeat (no, it wasn't Sweeney Todd ). Then at some point someone started talking about the fruit in a mince pie and...I became very confused. Turns out the original recipe was ground meat, suet and fruit and it has become sweeter over time. Most modern recipes don't even have meat in them or even suet, but no one has changed the name to Spiced Fruit Pie. Well, I still consider "mincemeat pie" to be false advertising.

I definitely call them fruit mince pies, and I think most commercially sold pies in Australia are called fruit mince pies.

My mind got boggled pretty early in life by a pair of twins I went to high school with. I had to pull a complete list of our class for a grade-wide project, and...discovered that the twins were not only identical to look at, but their parents had given them both the same full legal name. Their records had to be differentiated by their Social Security numbers, which were, of course, very very close together.

I frequently get contacts by students whose names fall outside of the format normally used by the Anglo-centric world - one poor kid had eight names distributed between the first name and last name fields - I think his middle name field contained an additional two names! This tends to cause them a great deal of difficulty using some of the automated processes. Another girl had a special character not normally seen by our systems, which ended up creating a very odd looking jumble in the middle of her name.

As far as silly things I've had to tell people: no, I can't make it across town (meaning, here, a drive of about 15 city miles) in traffic after work in ten minutes - I can't even make it to my own house that fast after work, and I only live two miles away from work!

An acquaintance of mine from the UK visited the South Island of New Zealand in winter and hated her entire three weeks in the country because the weather was not hot enough. Fair enough, bad weather can interfere with travel plans or other activities, but further conversation revealed that the weather had been typical for the climate and time of year, and in fact she believed that everywhere 'abroad' was hot and she and her boyfriend had previously discussed moving to Canada 'because he liked hillwalking and she liked hot weather'. She got a bit annoyed with me when I tried to explain.

Bwahahahah! I don't know what part of Canada she was planning on moving to, but it is currently -33C with a wind chill of -45C in little part of Canada. If she knows of somewhere in Canada that is hot, then for the sake of my frosty toes, (and all the rest of my body parts) please share!

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"I think her scattergun was only loaded with commas and full-stops, although some of them cuddled together for warmth and produced little baby colons and semi-colons." ~ Margo